


Little Nesting Doll

by Daebak



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A.G.R.A., Gen, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daebak/pseuds/Daebak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe, one day, she could hide under a guise of her own, under a name that fit her as well as Lincoln did in her dress pocket while he slept. But for now, she would live on as Alyssa. Until the name moved on from her, or she moved on from it. Whichever came first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alyssa

**Author's Note:**

> Thought it was about time to write a self-indulgent Mary fic.

**Alyssa**

_She may be the face I can't forget_  
 _The trace of pleasure or regret_  
 _May be my treasure or the price I have to pay_  
 _She may be the song the summer sings_  
 _May be the chill the autumn brings_  
 _May be a hundred different things_  
 _Within the measure of a day_

_\- She_ , Elvis Costello

She touches the little wooden figure, tracing its painted face. The doll in her hands smiles at her, a quaint, shy sort of smile, and she wonders just how its smile can be so lovely when for years, it stood on the shelf and watched its owner die.

Grabbing its head and its robust lower body, she twists and pulls. Inside is another doll. Twist. Pull. Twist. Pull. Was it done? No, not yet. One more time. Twist. A final pull. She places the figures side by side. They wear the same expressions on their identical faces, smiling with their full red lips, long eyelashes curving away from dark blue eyes.

 _How pretty_ , she thinks.  _Just like Mama._ And she remembers her Mama, the way she would kiss her nose when she cried, her soft hair enveloping the sides of her face like a protective veil. Her shampoo, she recalls, smelled like sweet alyssum. Patches of white on the ground that appeared in the spring and summer and filled the air with sweetness even when the air was still. She would pretend it was snow, plucking the tiny flowers from the ground and throwing them toward the sky. When some landed in her hair, Mama would laugh, brushing them off with her hands. "Brr, I'm so cold," she'd joke. "Snow in the summer! Not even in Russia did that happen."

She hadn't understood at the time that her Mama was always cold.

Now, the dolls smile at her, and she stares back. For the first time, she notices a tiny flaw on the last doll: its lip twists down on the right side of its face – perhaps due to a tremble of the careful artist's hands – turning the customary smile into a grimace. She pockets it.

Two hours later, she stands at the graveyard beside her Papa as he cries a soldier's cry. His shoulders shake and his hands cover his face, but when he removes them mere minutes later, his face is dry and set like stone. He kneels down and presses a kiss on the gravestone, murmuring words of love that she thinks are pointless; her Mama's already in the ground (and maybe up in the sky like the priest says, but she doesn't believe him, because how could Mama go all the way up there if she couldn't even get out of her bed?).

"Ali, let's go. Let's go home," Papa says, but his feet stay rooted to the ground.

Her hands slip inside the pocket of her modest black dress and touch the doll. She doesn't cry. Not even a soldier's cry, like Papa. She thinks that maybe, somewhere inside of her, a little person is crying for her Mama. But it was her job to not let it show. Mama had said it many times before, while she withered away in the confines of her bed, one skeletal hand scratching at her daughter's cheeks: "Don't you cry, don't you cry." So she smiles and holds her Papa's hand and pulls him away from the dead body in the ground.

She turns five the following week.

* * *

Papa tells her that she is named after her grandmother back in Russia. "Алиса Амелина, Alisa Amelina," he says, gesturing to a photo in the family album, "was my mother, your grandmother. She adored you when you were born, said you look – looked – just like your Mama." And no matter how hard she tries, Alisa can't remember her grandmother; she can't remember Russia at all.

She prefers to believe that Mama named her after those small white flowers that bloomed in their garden long ago, and asks Papa to call her 'Alyssa' instead. People at school can't remember the long 'i' anyway, she explains to him. It's easier this way. I'm an  _American_  now, aren't I?

After a long pause, he agrees. But when she gets up to go to her room, she notices that his kind eyes have filled with tears. She turns back, suddenly struck with the need to say something just to get rid of that look in his eyes.

"I'll always be Alisa Amelina to you, Papa," she tells him. "But I'll just be Alyssa A. at school, okay?"

He smiles at her and pats his knee. She leans over to give him a kiss.

* * *

Her appendix bursts a month after her mother's funeral. She doesn't notice it at first, really. A slight headache in the early evening, a few trips to the bathroom to lean over the toilet. Papa assumes – and so does she – that she's got the stomach flu that's been going around and school and puts her to bed with a hug.

The next thing she knows, she's curled up and sweating and whimpering in Papa's arms, vomit on her pajamas. She feels as if a fork has been jammed into her bellybutton; she tries to reach down and press to ease the pressure, but the more she moves, the fainter she feels. They end up in the emergency room at 3 a.m. and she wakes up to the bright light of the hospital room four hours later. The doctor smiles at her and commends her tired Papa for getting Alisa to the hospital so quickly.

He says that peritonitis can be fatal. She finds herself wondering what would have happened if Papa had gone out for a night shift that evening, like he often did. Would he have come back to find her pale and still on her bed, lying in a pool of yellow sick? Would he have cried? She doesn't know if he would have. She wasn't Mama, after all.

* * *

Papa isn't a bad father. Papa is the best father he could ever be.

He takes her to the zoo and holds her on his shoulders so she can feed the spoiled monkeys; he reads her  _The Hobbit_  and  _The Secret Garden_  and  _The Chronicles of Narnia_  before she can understand all the words, before she can grip the novels in her small hands; he calls his female coworker for advice on how to do his baby daughter's hair for her first day of school (he can only manage a messy ponytail); he cooks alphabet soup and spells out silly words to make her giggle; and he tries, tries, tries so hard to fill the empty space left by her Mama.

So when the bullet shoots through the open window and through Papa's head and into the wall and he collapses into her lap, Alyssa screams. She screams and screams and screams. His body is heavy and his head... oh God, something warm is staining her dress and  _The Jetsons_  is playing on TV and he's not moving and she's screaming and –

The next thing she remembers is that it's morning again; the sunlight is shining through the open window and Papa's still on her lap like he's sleeping. She touches his face – a part untouched by the bullet's impact – and feels the coldness under his stubble. She pushes him off her dress – it's ruined now, of course, and it's the dress Mama had bought for her – and goes to the bathroom to wash the dried blood off her hands.

It takes 16 pumps of soap to get it off her palms.

Then she calls the police: 9-1-1, just like they taught her at school. Before they arrive, she goes into her bedroom and opens the drawer to get her little nesting doll. She has a feeling that she will not be coming back.

And she never does.

They send her to the hospital with a kind, tired lady. Mrs Macpherson is her name, and she says that she is deeply sorry, but she will not be able to see her father again. She then waits outside the hospital room as Alyssa is examined, then waits outside another white door as a crooked old man asks her pointless questions.

"Hello, Alisa. I hear you're in second grade. How are you doing in school?" Good.

"How are your friends?" Fine.

"And how are you feeling?" Fine.

"I'm sorry about your father."

"Do you miss your father, Alisa?" My name's  _Alyssa_.

"... All right. My mistake, Alyssa. Do you understand that you will not be able to see him again?" Yes.

"Due to the most unfortunate circumstances, you have no family left who can take you in. You'll be put in with a new family very soon. They'll be very nice. How do you feel about that?"

"Do you have anything you want to ask me?"

"Alrighty. If you ever have any problems, tell Mrs Macpherson. Good-bye, Alisa."

A week later, after she steps inside her first foster home, she notices that there's still some dried blood left under her fingernails. And in the privacy of the bathroom, she cries for her Mama and her Papa and because she just doesn't understand why Mama got sick and why Papa bled and why, just why, that bullet flew in her window that day and took her father away.

* * *

Her foster Mama is forty-five years old, and on the third day after Alyssa arrives, she takes her new daughter to the pet store. "I've always wanted a pet myself," foster Mama tells Alyssa, winking, as Alyssa bends down to pet a small grey kitten with dark blue eyes. The kitten purrs under her touch and Alyssa looks up at foster Mama who is chatting with the employee.

"That's a Russian Blue," the sales-person explains, "and that one's the runt of the litter. Cute little guy all the same. 20% off if you buy a litter-box and a carrier along with him."

She names him Lincoln, after her favourite president, and foster Mama gives her an approving nod.

That evening, Alyssa lies on her bedroom carpet and spends two hours trying to teach Lincoln tricks. He meows at her and scratches her arm with his claws, but she loves him all the same.

* * *

She celebrates her eighth birthday with her foster Mama and Lincoln and a cake that was baked especially for her. The joyful evening crumples when she turns the TV on to an episode of  _The Jetsons_ because she can't stop screaming and she sees blood on her hands and hears the bullet punching through her Papa's skull. Foster Mama holds her in her arms and Lincoln climbs into her lap, but even then, she can't stop shaking.

But eventually.

And slowly.

Things get better.

* * *

One morning, foster Mama comes to her with a hesitant smile. "I've got a surprise for you, Alyssa."

And Alyssa, halfway through  _The Clue in the Jewel Box_ , her favourite Nancy Drew story, folds in the page and puts it down. "What is it?" she asks, then pauses. "Is school cancelled?"

Foster Mama laughs at the hopeful look on her face. "No, hon. I've got a different sort of surprise for you." She then reveals a folder she'd been hiding behind her back. "After talking with Mrs Macpherson, I've managed to get a hold of your birth certificate, if you'd like to see it."

"Please," Alyssa says, "I'd like to see it."

She spends the rest of the day writing out her initials in her journal – A.G.R.A. – and considers how strange it is that she has never felt like an Alisa in her entire life, and Alyssa feels like a poor substitution. She picks up the Nancy Drew book again, eyes tracing the author's name: Carolyn Keene. It was a fake name, a pseudonym; it had been revealed a couple years back.

Maybe, one day, she could hide under a guise of her own, under a name that fit her as well as Lincoln did in her dress pocket while he slept. But for now, she would live on as Alyssa. Until the name moved on from her, or she moved on from it. Whichever came first.

* * *

She develops a fascination for mystery, inspired by the young female detective – and also by the deep desire to solve a haunting question of her own. At Christmas, she asks foster Mama for a beginner's book on codes and symbols. And soon enough, she knows Morse code; her initials were the first thing she learned: dot-dash, dash-dash-dot, dot-dash-dot, dot-dash. Now she can tap out anything, as easily and naturally as water flowing from a tap.

She has been going to the library a lot often these days, working on her research. After school, before dinner, before school, after dinner. Her schoolwork suffers, and foster Mama gently questions her about them.

"Anything bothering you, Alyssa?"

Alyssa shrugs, tapping away at the table in a pattern of dots and dashes.

Foster Mama huffs a breath. "I know that you can do better, Aly. Try your best, okay?"

 _Dot-dot, dot-dash-dash-dash-dash-dot, dash-dash..._ A pause.  _Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dash-dot, dot-dash-dot, dash-dot-dash-dash._

Sighing, foster Mama shakes her head and smiles. "You know what? I have no idea what you're saying, hon, but just know that I'll always be here if you need to talk." She gives Alyssa's shoulder a final squeeze and heads back to the kitchen.

The next report card gets framed on the wall, a row of red As proudly displayed.

* * *

In 5th grade, her class is assigned a family tree.

 _Mama_ , she writes first.

 _Papa_ , she writes second.

 _Grandma Alisa Amelina_ , she writes third,  _from Russia_.

Then she pauses. "Russia," she whispers. "Why did we move from Russia?"

When she gets home after school that day, she heads to her bedroom. It's a simple room; there's a bed covered in a warm quilt, a desk with a built-in bookshelf for her numerous novels, and a dresser for her clothes. The only decoration that makes it uniquely hers, she thinks, is the little nesting doll on top of the dresser. It smiles at her crookedly as she stares at it.

She remembers. Papa's holding her hand. She giggles at the TV. Then the bullet shoots through her open window. Papa jerks and collapses just as quickly, his face a mess of gore. She's frozen, because there's blood in her eyes that wasn't there before, and Papa's still holding her hand. And suddenly she remembers something else she saw in the corner of her eye.

A face in the open window. A man holding a gun peering in, then staring at the little girl beside his target.

He looks shocked. Not overtly; but she can tell from the slight widening of his eyes and the slackness in his jaw. When her mouth opens and she begins to scream, he flees, as if he were never there. The police never found any evidence, she knows. They suspected that it was a bitter coworker who'd lost a job, maybe, or just a random case of violence. Whatever it was, they never followed up on it.

She thinks about the man in the window and his wide eyes. Her fists clench tightly.

Maybe he hadn't known that the man he shot dead was her Papa or that he had a daughter.

But why shoot him dead in the first place?

* * *

By age 11, she can speak in awkward Russian, understand it a little better, but read it perfectly fine.

One day, when she goes to buy the weekly Russian newspaper from the small shop down the road, she bumps into a man by the stand who stares inquisitively at her selection.

"You read that newspaper?" he asks her in Russian. He looks like he hasn't shaved in a while.

"I try my best," she enunciates, shrugging.

The man seems amused at her effort. "I see you haven't been learning for long?"

"No. I do not have anybody with whom to practice."

"I could help you," he says, munching on a candy bar.

"Would you?"

"Are you free now?"

"Yes," she replies without hesitation. "Will you help me?"

"If you'd like."

She gets home at seven in the evening, and foster Mama's waiting for her at the front door, foot tapping, lines of stress on her forehead. "Where have you been, young lady? You went out at four to get a newspaper. Last time I checked, it doesn't take three hours to get the paper. What have you got to say for yourself?"

She thinks about it for a second. No matter how understanding foster Mama was, she doubts that she would understand her meeting up with a grown man to practice Russian.

So she apologizes. "Sorry, I didn't mean to make you worry or anything. I met a friend and we were talking for a while. Lost track of time. But I'll make dinner."

Foster Mama sighs, fondly exasperated, and gestures for Alyssa to come in. "I already made dinner. Try not to lose track of time again, all right, darling?"

She agrees.

The next time she meets up with Taras, she wears two watches: one on her left wrist, one on her right. She doesn't want to disappoint her foster Mama.

By age 12, she can speak in Russian like a native, understand it even better, and read it perfectly fine.

* * *

Maybe it's because of her past. The mystery of where she came from and who her parents really were and why things happened the way they did. But she takes comfort in words.

She sees patterns in words, their roots, their meanings. They connect in her mind like puzzle pieces and  _god_ , when something clicks, really  _clicks_  in her head, she can barely describe the elation she feels.

And that's not the only way they comfort her.

When foster Mama tells her that she's proud, when she engulfs her in a hug and murmurs "good work" and "I always knew you could do it", she feels as if she could walk on water if she tried.

When Taras starts talking and she replies and they talk for hours on end and she doesn't even realize they're speaking Russian and he ruffles her hair and praises her – "You're improving every day, my girl" – she grins, forgetting for a moment why she's learning Russian in the first place.

When she lies in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, mouthing the word over and over again: убийца.

* * *

She graduates high school in '91. Alisa Amelina, Class of 1991, her diploma reads. She keeps the piece of parchment in her hands all neatly tied up and brings it to the hospital. "Look, Mom, I graduated," she whispers, gently pressing it into the frail hands of her mother (and just when she stopped being foster Mama, Alyssa doesn't remember).

"Oh, honey! I wish I could have been there. All the same, I'm so glad...  _so glad_  that I got to see you turn into a wonderful young woman. Oh, hon."

She doesn't tell her of the full-tuition scholarship offer she's received just that morning: four full years of funded courses and residency. Doesn't tell Mom that she's been offered an internship as an interpreter at the international relations department in Washington. Because for now, all that matters is giggling with her mother about old Lincoln and talking about how their homemade cranberry loaf had won first place last year at the fair.

And as if she'd timed it that way, as if she'd held on just long enough to see her daughter graduate, Mom passes away the same year. Breast cancer.

* * *

She is walking down the street with her headphones on her ears and her mind in another world entire – when she slams into a terribly expensive suit. And the tall man wearing it. The impact sends the wire spectacles on his face flying to the ground, and she scrambles to pick them up, flushing.

"Sorry about that, Mister," she apologizes, holding the spectacles out to the suited man. He silently reaches out a manicured thumb and index finger to pluck them from her hand as if she's something repulsive. She can't help feel slightly offended, and so she chances a glance up at the man's face.

He's peering down at her, the spectacles back on his nose. Without thinking about it, she takes a step back, and he smiles. There's something uncomfortable, unsettling about his gaze, the blankness of his clear grey eyes, and she does not want to be under it any longer. So she steps around him and makes busy of playing the next song on her Walkman when he begins to speak.

"The rather violent death of your father hurt you, I see," he murmurs. He has a strange lilt to his voice, and she stares at him with wide eyes. "And your closest friend, a Russian expatriate. Interesting." A part of her mind identifies his accent as Danish.

Another part sees her father's bloody face.

He chuckles softly at her shocked expression. "And you have  _no_ idea why he died, do you, my girl?" He says it in the same casual tone as one would say, "You have  _no_ idea what McDonald's puts in their hamburgers, do you?"

She whispers, "No," and she hates herself for sounding so small. But she hates this man's smile even more.

"Maybe if you knew the truth," he says, then pauses. "Yes... it would be such fun to see your little face when I tell you that..." Trailing off, he seems to reconsider his words. "Well, I might just let you figure it out on your own."

Her hands itch to grab his collar and pull him down to her level – to demand how he knows what he's insinuating, since she's never told anyone,  _anyone_ , about the exact events of that day – but she doesn't. She was powerless. And, to her self-disgust, she feels like she would do anything he asked of her if only he could tell her more.

She says roughly, "Tell me whatever you want to say."

He hums for a moment, considering, then takes his spectacles off. "Then I want you," he says, "to lick these clean. You made them fall, now you lick them clean." He holds them out to her.

"What?" she laughs incredulously. Surely she must have heard him incorrectly? But he is still holding out the spectacles, still looking at her with a expectant expression.

When she doesn't take them, he sighs as if in disappointment, then puts them back on. "Actions have consequences, Miss... Amelina. You would do well to learn that." He starts to walk away.

And she hates it and she hates it and she hates it but – "Give me the spectacles."

People continue to move past them on the busy street, unaware and unseeing.

Every nerve is trembling in disgust as she brings the glasses to her mouth. When she tries to hand them back after licking the outer side, he calmly gestures for her to lick the inside as well, and so she does. She almost throws them into his hand when he reaches out.

To her horror, instead of wearing them right away, he brings the spectacles straight to his mouth. Lick. Lick. Lick. Lick. He smacks his lips. "Interesting," he murmurs, and she feels her gorge rise. Trembling, she opens her mouth to curse, to say  _something_  – when he lets the spectacles slip from his bony fingers and onto the pavement.

"Oops," he says without remorse. "I guess you'll have to clean them again."

She breathes out in disbelief. "What?"

"Pick them up and clean them again."

"No," she says, shaking her head.

"Do it."

" _No._ " Not this time. No more.

He tilts his head to the side. "So be it."

She makes no move to stop him as he walks past her again, as briskly and calmly as if nothing had happened. But she can't help but grit out a final question at his back: "Who the  _hell_  are you?"

Her fists clench as he merely turns his head to the side to answer. There is a smile on the visible side of his face.

"I'm merely a businessman."

When the thin figure disappears down the road, she stares for a beat longer then turns back around.

The spectacles glint ominously on the sidewalk where they fell; and however irrational the feeling, she feels naked under its gaze.

She steps forward and cracks them under her feet.

* * *

At the job fair, she finds herself at the CIA recruitment table.

There is a small smattering of people lingering at the sides, intimidated by the two stone-faced representatives. They sit, backs straight, at the display – a man and woman, as plain as their ironed, unassuming black suits. She approaches them without hesitation.

They look up. The man smirks. She stares back at him calmly. She knows that he sees but a naive, blonde, blue-eyed girl – barely 5'3", barely tall enough to reach his wide shoulders. The woman, however, looks at her with curiosity.

"Major?" she asks. Her nametag reads  _Miller_.

"Linguistics," Alyssa replies. "And Russian."

The man looks interested, now. He puts down his pen and raises a dark eyebrow. "Russian, eh? How well can you speak it?"

"Quite well."

"We don't need people who can speak 'quite well'."

She smiles. " _Very_  well."

The year she graduates, she is accepted into the agency. First, as a linguist. Then, as the years go by and she begins to yearn for something more, she applies again for the position of Operation Officer.

She is accepted. And at age 25, she is one of the youngest in her team.

_tbc._


	2. A.G.R.A.

**A.G.R.A.**

_She may be the beauty or the beast_  
May be the famine or the feast  
May turn each day into a heaven or a hell  
She may be the mirror of my dreams  
The smile reflected in a stream  
She may not be what she may seem inside her shell

_\- She_ , Elvis Costello

_Krrrr._ "A. Come in. A, report."

"Still no movement. Over," she mutters, trying to muffle the sound of the earpiece with her hand. What was the point of having an invisible earpiece if the high-pitched sound were audible?

"Any signs of the suspect? Over."

She tilts her head slightly to the right toward a car in the corner. The reflection in the car mirror is of the suspect's apartment door. She is loitering under the canopy of the shop in the corner, as inconspicuous as a simple young woman browsing for magazines at the stand.

For a  _slightly_  longer time than normal.

"No signs. May need to move soon to avoid suspicion. Ov – oh,  _shit_." The apartment door has opened.

She kills the mic, smoothly moving her position to the inside. The heavy-set shop-owner gives her a fleeting look then goes back to restocking the shelves.

_Krrrr_. "Agent, report. Backup needed?"

She doesn't dare reply as their suspect walks into the little shop, her stomach dropping when the shop-owner pales and rushes into the backroom without a backward glance.

Their suspect is a handsome man in his forties, dark-haired and clean-shaven. Robertson. He looks more like a businessman or a model on a real-estate ad than anything, and yet, he is the mastermind of a sex-trafficking ring for underage girls between the United States and the Middle East. He comes up the aisle in her direction, seemingly browsing a selection of shaving cream.

As he nears, she feels a tingling in her spine: a warning, her mind screaming at her to  _leave now_.

With an uninterested look at the man, she strides to the front counter and rings the bell, a pack of gum in her hand.

The back of the shop is quiet.

She rings the bell again, tapping her foot impatiently. "What do I have to do to get some service around here?" she grumbles. "I'm going to the next shop over." She turns to the door.

A thick arm blocks her way.

"Excuse me," she says calmly. He eyes her up and down, his tongue flicking out to lick the corner of his lips.

"What's your name, little lady?" Robertson croons.

She feels goose bumps rise on her arms at his voice, lusty and low, and suppresses her shiver. This was routine. Concentrate, concentrate.

"None of your business, old man. My friends are waiting for me outside."

That was a mistake, she thinks immediately. Robertson would have seen that there was nobody outside as he was coming in.  _Stupid_.

Rolling her eyes at him, she places the gum on the counter and makes to duck under the stretched arm when he suddenly shoves her into the counter and slaps her hard across the face. She gasps at the impact, head-ringing.

He presses her hips to the counter with his, so tightly that she can't move an inch to the side, and seizes her wrists with bruising strength. The other hand yanks the earpiece away and thrusts it to the floor, strands of long blonde hair accompanying it.

Suppressing a wince, she glares at him. "That was expensive, thanks."

"I've been waiting for some government pig to show up at my doorstep," he says, "but I didn't know they were recruiting beautiful young whores these days. You cheap?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He grins. "You'd be popular with my clients. Blonde, blue eyes, innocent face, cheeky. You could pass for 17."

"Oh, are you a talent recruiter? Would you like to hear me sing?"

His hand comes up again and she recoils at the force of the hit, her head buzzing even harder. Robertson is still smiling, but it looks carved into his face, a jagged knife to wood. "Let's cut the crap. You CIA?" Her back digs painfully into the sharp edge of the counter.

She forces a snigger. "CIA? Are you joking?"

"Don't lie."

"Why would I lie about not being in the CIA?"

" _Don't_ antagonize me."

The next thing she knows, she's looking into the small dark hole of a handgun. But when she gasps, it isn't at the firearm mere inches from her face; instead, she gasps at the shock of recognizing the gun.

The face in the window that one sunny day. The gun that blew her Papa's face apart.

Despite herself, she can't help ask the question: "Where did you get that gun?"

He looks briefly nonplussed, then laughs. "You want to know what's going to kill you?"

"Exactly," she says, nodding seriously. "If you think I'm the CIA and are prepared to kill an innocent civilian, you might as well tell me what you're going to shoot me with, don't you think?"

"Cheeky young girl, aren't you? You know who I got it from?" He examines his gun with fondness before pointing it again at her head. "Some agent sent to kill me. From Russia. It's not a sniper rifle, this; it's for close distance. You can actually see the surprise on your victim's face before – splat! – they die. Handy, innit? Took the bastard's daughter after I cut his throat. Beautiful young thing. Popular," he says, and she is struck with the sudden desire to rip off his slimy lips.

"How old?" she asks, her mind a turmoil of thoughts.  _Russia? Agent?_

Robertson grins. "Twelve. Trembing in the motel, waiting for her daddy to come back from his errand. She told me they were on vacation. Hah! After what I did to Daddy, I thought it fit to take her under my wing. It'd've been a waste to let her go back to the Commies." He sounds pleased.

"That's good of you. How do you even choose your clients, anyway?" Her heart is pounding, but not from nervousness. The murderer's face swims in her mind.

"I have my ways."

"And those ways are?"

"Secret."

Pushing the thought of Russia aside for now, she opts for Plan B (or, as her teammate called it, Plan Full-On Bitch:  _not_  recommended or endorsed by the CIA).

A snort. "That's what I thought. You probably have a bunch of goons who work for two bucks an hour, right? So much for being a criminal mastermind. You know, if I  _were_ CIA, I don't know why they would be wasting time on you." She watches his handsome face crumple into a frown.

"You have  _no_ idea the work that goes in," Robertson says petulantly.

"Do you fit it in between buying bargain shaving cream and watching football alone with a box of tissues?"

His face turns even uglier. "You bitch," he growls, releasing her wrists to put both hands on the gun.

And there was her chance.

She whacks his wrists with joined arms, making her hit strong enough to knock his balance off kilter; so when he pulls the trigger a split second later, there is nothing more than a burning on her right cheek and a sudden, all-engulfing silence from the bullet's roar. She thinks she may have screamed. Without a pause, she slams a foot into his crotch and the heel of her hand pounds his nose upwards into his head –  _crunch_ – and he's down on the ground, bleeding. Robertson's mouth is moving; spittle lands on her face as she leans over him, unsympathetic to the blood coursing from his nose like from a broken dam. The gun is missing from his hands. Instead, she notices, it's in hers.

She stands over him in her silent world. He is cowering, hands raised over his head. A damned man at the mercy of his own damn gun. She aims the weapon and his mouth rounds in protest:  _no, no, no._ And as her finger moves instinctively to the trigger, from her periphery, she notices a slight movement at the door.

Her teammate strides in, steps precise and quick, wielding a pair of handcuffs. "Stand down, A. I'll take it from here," Andrew says, peering at Robertson like he's a particularly grimy piece of gum stuck to his shoe. "Get some ice on that bruise and some cream on that burn," he adds, jutting his chin toward her face. It is then that she notices the pulsing ache on both cheeks: the graze of the bullet and the sting of the slaps.

Keeping her aim on Robertson, she backs away, leaving room for Andrew to shove the man to the ground and cuff his wrists behind him. But before she is out the door, Robertson, voice pitched low despite his mangled nose, calls in her direction. "Pretty blonde girl like you, I'd watch your back. You never know who might want to just...  _lick you up_."

Andrew shoves his back hard – "I'd advise you to keep your mouth  _shut_ , sir" – but she can't help shuddering at his words.

After she hands over the wire she had hidden in her jacket and files the report and explains why she didn't get the hell out of the shop at the first sign of danger, she finally leaves the building, exhausted and sore – but satisfied at the part she played in the sting. Before she arrives at her small apartment building, she stops by the gas station just around the corner to make a purchase.

And the moment she reaches her bathroom, she sets to dyeing her hair black.

* * *

"Well, that  _is_  an interesting look."

Andrew is still gaping at her from across the table. He'd been gaping ever since she walked in the restaurant. The gaudy red candle flickers between them and she pinches it out, making a face at him. "Get over it, Andy." She runs a hand down her new hairdo – she's had it cut and straightened the day before, to just below her shoulders – and flips it dramatically. "I thought this would, you know, inspire me to be better at my job. Dark and mysterious and all that crap."

"God, you look like my  _sister_."

"Oh, isn't she that Victoria's Secret model?"

"She's a teller at that BofA by McDonald's."

"I  _knew_  there was a reason all the gorgeous men went there instead of HSBC."

Andrew rolls his eyes. "Okay, you and I both know that I can't win against you in like, any conversation ever. But we  _are_ both trained in interrogation and evitation, so don't think I'm oblivious to your techniques. So, Miss AGRA, why'd you decide to go all Morticia on us? Charlene was gawping so hard I thought she'd finally cracked from staring at code all day."

She raises her eyebrows at him. Throwing around her agent moniker, was he now?

"Sorry, sorry, A," he says hastily, knowing the reason behind her glare. "But seriously: why?"

"Well," she says, twirling her hair around her index finger. "It's very  _Bond_ , wouldn't you say?"

He snorts and takes a sip of his beer, melting back into his seat, finally relaxed. Good. Maybe he'd lay off on the questions. "You never even liked those films, A."

"Oh, give it a rest, Andy," she says exasperatedly, flapping a hand in his direction. "I'm 28. I'm having a mid-life crisis."

"Mid-life? You aren't even 30, my friend."

"My bones ache like they're 75, however," she grumbles. The bruise on her face – as well as the ones on her hips – is fading; the bullet graze is still bright red on her face. It's been three days since Robertson, and she still feels cold when she thinks of his words.

_You never know who might want to just_ lick you up _._

And she remembers a familiar pair of spectacles on a flat, serpent face.

Jesus.

"A? Aly?" Andy's concerned voice breaks into her thoughts.

"God, I need a beer," she says, and snatches Andy's cup before he can protest. "You can stop treating me like I'm 12 and order me actual alcohol instead of ice tea, you know."

"Beer is more expensive," he jokes. She tosses a crumpled napkin at his head.

He plucks it out of the air and grins sheepishly. "Okay, I just can't stop seeing you as that tiny little girl who walked into headquarters five years ago with bright blue doe eyes and a lacy pink purse."

She stares. "I can literally shoot a coin in midair."

"Who brings in apple pie and chocolate muffins every other week."

"I can decipher almost any coded message."

"Who reads one dollar romance novels during lunch breaks."

"I can swear at you in fluent Russian."

He bursts into laughter. "All right, you win." He waves the waitress over and gives her a stunning smile. "One house beer for my friend here, please. And, uh," he adds, a slip of paper appearing mysteriously between his fingers, "if you would do me the  _honour_  of calling me after your shift..." The waitress grins and heads off to the bar, a blush on her cheeks.

"Andy, you've  _got_  to stop flirting with women half your age."

"Hey, you go through your mid-life crisis in your twenties, and I'll try and date while I'm still in my thirties. It's not easy to find your other half when you're in this business."

She rubs her eyes and sighs. "Tell me about it." She puts on a fake cheerful voice. "'Hi, I'm Aly. Call me A. I work for the CIA to catch bad guys. Oh, did you know that I could probably kill you with my bare hands or through some elaborate, elongated form of torture disguised as interrogation? Bummer, I'll have to call off the date night 'cause I have to go to Nigeria and shoot –' Oh, bother. Never mind. You get my point."

"A," Andy interrupts, looking slightly perturbed, "you make us sound like a bunch of bloodthirsty bastards."

"Aren't we?" she challenges.

There is a beat of silence between the two agents.

Staring at the red wax of the now-cold candle and feeling the alcohol warming her throat, she finds herself quietly saying something that has been weighing on her mind these last few months: "They've been asking me to take on assignments that... I don't quite agree with."

She knows that she can trust Andy: her confidante and her partner for the last three years of her going undercover, and a colleague for double that time. They had their disagreements, oh yes – spurred on usually by the stress of the job – but the fact that they could disagree on sensitive topics without lingering acrimony was a testament to their friendship.

And so, she confesses.

There is a pause as Andy considers this, looking thoughtful. He takes a swig of his beer. "You know, A," he starts carefully, "all my life I dreamed of being a secret agent – the  _Bond_  – and 'lo and behold, here I am. Dream job. Great benefits. Cool title."

She gives him a slight grin, remembering their first introduction.  _Call me Andy._ Agent  _Andy_.

He continues on. "But to get here, I've had to do things. I've done things I never thought I'd do simply because there was a paycheck at the end." Here, he frowns, but then gives his head a quick shake. "I know I only have about, what, seven more years of experience? But here's what I've learned: you do what your bosses tell you to do, and you will find success. Morals? They have no place here. Personal beliefs? Throw them out the window. You signed up for a job, so you do it. You do it without question.

"We're all soldiers in a war, pawns in a game. That's how society works. That's how the government works. And that's  _especially_  how the CIA works."

* * *

The following Monday, she finds an inconspicuous envelope in her inbox. A thick packet advertising coupons she could use to buy groceries at Safeway. A tendril of dread winds its way up her chest and clutches at her throat as she stares at the packet in her hands; she knows that it contains not coupons, but a task.

Schooling her features, she waves at Charlene and mouths  _spam mail_ , making her coworker roll her eyes in sympathy. Alyssa was the only person on their floor who got spam mail every couple of months; they clearly needed to retrain the interns who sorted the post.

When she arrives at her desk, she casually stretches her back – just another typical day – and casts an eye around to assess her surroundings. There is no one by her desk, her co-workers busy typing away or staring intently at their screens. She takes out a letter opener and very carefully unseals the envelope.

She thinks, not for the first time, that she should have never signed that damned contract.

* * *

It is shortly after her being assigned as an operations officer that she is called into the office of the COO. Andrew has dubbed him the Hulk, the massive green character from the comics and the soon-to-be movie, for he is just as any outsider would imagine a director of the CIA: intimidating, huge, and serious as hell.

Hulk flicks his eyes up at her and tilts his head to the side; she stares back at him, trying not to feel as though she's a specimen under his microscope. She's never been one to cower.

He opens his mouth and says, "The CIA doesn't kill."

What on earth was she supposed to say to that?

"The CIA doesn't have assassins," Hulk continues, finally looking away. He starts to pick at his nails and gestures at her to sit down in black leather chair in front of his desk. Once she is settled, he pulls out a file and sets it in front of her. ALISA G. R. AMELINA, it reads.

Then before she can ask what, exactly, was the reason for this meeting, he stops her short by saying something completely unexpected: "Ms Amelina, It's come to our notice that with some special training and some extra hours, you could be one of our best agents."

She quirks a brow. "Sir, I've just been assigned as an operations officer –"

"– and here, I'm offering you something more, if you'll let me continue," he interrupts, looking severe. She sits back and waits, resisting the urge to cross her arms. After a moment, he clears his throat and begins anew. "You could be one of our best agents – not just as a linguist or an operations officer, but as a... field agent who  _will_ carry out tasks such as termination, in times of extreme necessity."

He pauses for a moment as if to gauge her reaction, but her face betrays nothing.

"So you're saying," she says slowly, "an assassin."

He gives her a look. "The CIA doesn't have assassins."

She nods. Of course not.

"If you would choose to accept this offer, you will have no official title. An envelope will arrive in your mailbox with an assignment, disguised. Your coworkers will not know about this. You will need to be discreet. You will get directions, as well as other items – such as plane tickets and receipts for hotel reservations – if required. You will be going out of country more often than not. Your absence will be excused and explained accordingly. You will  _not_ question your assignments."

It was an order: You will  _not_  question your assignments. You  _will_ obey.

"Am I to be working independently?" she asks, thinking of Andrew, who was her teammate for her role as operations officer. She wonders if he, too, is such a field agent for the Hulk, plucked from the rest of their coworkers and handed an M40M3. With his skill set, she thinks he very well may be.

"Yes," Hulk replies. "And should you fail to be discreet, should you reveal your task or deviate from it, then there will be consequences."

"Such as termination," she says, meaning her job.

He smiles thinly. "Perhaps in more ways than one."

She tilts her head at him. He stares back, unflinching.

And when the office falls into a silence that presses into her very skin, when she's run the conversation over in her head once, twice, thrice, she can't help but to ask: "Why me?"

"You're quick," Hulk says without missing a beat, "and sharp. You've been observed... to be impassive and impulsive to an extent that some people might call cruel. Sociopathic. No action goes unnoticed around here." When she winces, thinking about the temptation of the trigger, the anticipated rush of satisfaction such a forbidden act would bring, he gives her a crooked, unamused smile. "We, on the other hand, would call it useful –  _ideal_ , in fact, for such field agents. You do what is necessary for the safety of this nation. You do what is right by you and by us, but this will make you  _better_."

The clock ticks on the wall, and someone laughs loudly from somewhere beyond the door. She thinks about Taras, who once, during one of their weekly sessions, told her that he had, long ago, tried to track and kill a man, a very bad man, who trespassed into his home in Russia and strangled his wife and child while he was at work. The man took their jewelry box and a pair of shoes.  _I was punching metal sheets while they were being slaughtered,_ Taras said, more bitterness than regret colouring his voice. _If only I were faster. If only I were capable. If only I could have caught the bastard._ And she thinks of the face in the window, like she did hundreds, thousands of times before.

If only she could be fast. If only she could be capable. If only she could catch the bastard.

If only.

"I'll take the job."

* * *

She trains quickly and effectively, impressing the stone-faced instructors. She is a crack shot – something she attributes to her keen vision – and discovers that her slight build is an advantage in gymnastics and acrobatics. However, not all of her training is in the physical: she finds herself plowing away at textbooks and newspapers, methodically solving crosswords and cryptographs, learning how to forge papers to fool even the best customs officer, and even imitating actors' mannerisms and accents on Sunday morning soaps. Anything that might be used to her advantage.

And, just a few months later, she gets a thick envelope in her inbox. An ad for washers and dryers, 20% off.

She is surprised – or perhaps unsurprised – to feel nothing at all when the bullet whips through the head of the drug lord and bloodies the wall of his decrepit hideout like spray paint. When she gets back to the office a day later, Andrew asks her if she's feeling better from her bout of flu. She tells him yes.

Then she knows that he knows, and he knows that she knows he knows. Things turn out to be better that way.

The first few tasks are easy, simple. The justifications are clearly laid out, reasons for the terminations making her toes curl inwards with disgust and her fingers clench with the need to slowly but surely pick out these people, one by one, and rid the Earth of them, like overgrown weeds in the garden.

And yet, as time goes by and more tasks are marked complete, she starts to notice inconsistencies. The justifications that made so much sense to her before seem sparse and biased. The men and women she targets are often living out of country, having put their past behind them. She watches them laugh with their neighbours in Mexico and France, tracks their patterns and routines and habits, and spends more and more time observing. Seeing.

And she sees not the heinous criminals described in their descriptions, but cautious, average people who once made mistakes and were now to pay for them with their lives.

_Terminate_  the man who is now 70, for he once inadvertently caused the death of three undercover CIA agents back when he was 34. She sees him walking his pet dog along the coast of British Columbia. He has a limp in his right leg.

_Terminate_ the woman who now teaches English in an impoverished community in China, for she drunkenly spilled sensitive government secrets to her date and soon found that she was being stalked by members of Al-Qaeda. She was deemed a defector when she ran without explanation.

This black branch of the CIA, as it turns out, tracked not only drug-lords and terrorists and traffickers, but journalists, government agents, politicians. People whose crimes had been forgotten, whose names had faded into obscurity – to all but  _them_. When the CIA deemed them sufficiently removed from the public eye, they would then make these people disappear, with nobody left to miss them.

In a way, by running away, her targets had dug their own graves.

* * *

Her eyes skim her assignment.

**AGENT ALISA AMELINA, CODE NAME AGRA  
** **LOCATION: TVER, RUSSIA**

Her heart starts to pound.  _Russia. Finally_. She has not forgotten the reason why she is who she is. Whom she has become, however, is a subject she does not want to ponder.

**TASK: TRACK AND TERMINATE FREDERICK HOFFMAN (SEE NOTE),  
** **RETURN TO BASE ONLY AND WHEN MISSION IS FINISHED**

It was always, always the rule: Do not return until you have done what you've been asked.

Only and when.

**Frederick Aubrey Hoffman (January 8th, 1952-)**  
 **Former DYCLAIM agent. Went AWOL after leaking sensitive information regarding LNHARP and VENONA.**  
 **Last seen Tver. Must be apprehended and terminated.  
** **No known relations.**

No known relations. She thinks that isolation is what seals the fate of their targets. There was no one to witness and no one to care. And as she looks around at her co-workers, desks decorated with framed pictures of their husbands or wives or chubby-cheeked children, her stomach tightens into a familiar ball; they all had someone. They would all be missed.

Who was there to miss her?

Years and years ago, she would have said her mother.

Months and months ago, she would have said Taras.

Perhaps Andrew, but he was merely a friend with many friends of his own. Her confidante, yes, and her closest friend, yes, but that did not mean he was hers in return. She wouldn't blame him. Everyone seemed to drift away from her in violent, inevitable ways, as if she were a pill they took to cure an illness but instead made it worse. She briefly considers Charlene, then almost snorts out loud. Daily exposure forged polite tolerance, not deep friendship and love.

The name on the documents fade, and as if through a fog, she sees her name in the target's place.

**Alisa G.R. Amelina (Jan. 21st, 1974-)  
** **No known relations.**

And she thinks she would make a rather ideal target, for she had no-one.

* * *

The next day, as she's shuffling around for documents at her desk and shoving them into her suitcase, Andrew leans over and wishes her dead mother good health with a concerned look on his face. "Sick again, huh?"

"Yeah. Might have to visit her for a week or more this time around," she replies easily.

"Damn," he whistles. And she knows what he's thinking: their cases, unless extremely covert, usually never ran over a week. "Well, I hope she gets better soon."

She smiles grimly. "Thanks, Andrew. So do I."

_tbc._


	3. Mary

**Mary**

_She may be the reason I survive_  
The why and wherefore I'm alive  
The one I'll care for through the rough in many years  
Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears  
And make them all my souvenirs  
For where she goes, I've got to be  
The meaning of my life is she

 _\- She,_ Elvis Costello

Mom –  _Mum_ , she corrects mentally – had always called her short-sighted. Not in an 'Is-that-a-bird-or-a-plane' way, but in an 'I-didn't-bring-an-extra-pair-of-socks' way. "Always plan ahead," Mum would say, smoothing down the hair of her adopted daughter as she squelched around in muddy trainers for the lack of dry socks. "You can never plan too far."

She has always had a knack for improvisation, an uncanny ability to process and plan situations in an impossibly short amount of time. An ideal trait for anyone undercover. Her Achilles heel was, however, that no matter how hard she tried to plan ahead, things tended to go awry in a way she hadn't foreseen.

And now, she stands in a graveyard.

* * *

When she arrives in Russia's Sheremetyevo airport, she is an unassuming, excited tourist visiting her grandparents in Moscow. The customs officer looks momentarily taken aback at her fluent Russian, but waves her through with a grin as she tells him that her mother had been adamant that she learn Russian from a young age. "I was pretty awful," she says with a tinge of embarrassment, "but I pulled through."

People usually believed stories when one added an aspect of humiliation within them.

After a sore three-and-a-half hour bus ride, she sets foot in Torzhok. It's a rather beautiful place, she thinks, as the cars roar past behind her. The buildings are quaint and homely, surrounded by low-laying trees whose dark-green foliage ruffled gently in the wind. It is a far-cry from the scene back home with the cookie-cutter apartment buildings that towered over the grey, dying trees.

And here, she drops her tourist guise and quickly becomes a local.

She plans on finishing her assignment by the end of the week, and to spend the rest of the time researching. Her mystery wasn't over yet.

Three days later – three surprisingly lovely days of drinking tea at an outdoor café and fine-tuning her accent with the owners – she casually mentions her old friend Frederick.

"I'm sure he used to live around here, somewhere," she says sadly, "but I'm afraid I've lost contact with him through the years." She pretends to reminisce while mentally sifting through classified documents. "Curly brown hair, grey eyes, large nose. A scar on the left side of his face –"  _Bar fight, 1975. Violent tendencies. Unpredictable when inebriated._ Or so the files claimed.  _"_ – from when he fell from a tree when we were younger. Clumsy Fred."

Aha, she thinks, as the owner's eyes light up and he fondly remarks, "Oh, Fyodor?"

Things progress from there, and Frederick Hoffman is unsurprisingly easy to find.

A week after her arrival, she is crouched under the half-opened window of the man's house – a small but well-maintained cottage. The muffled sound of a radio emanates from within; the old man is humming along, and she feels her chest clench. She wishes she couldn't feel anything at all. If only she could go back to believing that these men and women deserved what she was forced to bestow upon them.

God, when had she become such a coward?

She forces herself to breathe, to call down the black curtains on her racing mind, to restore the blankness, the utter indifference, she once felt when she carried out a job.

Two minutes later, the radio crackles out, and the house becomes silent. She grips her gun tightly in her hands. Now was the time to strike.

Spinning around on her heels, she smoothly gets up from her crouch and aims her gun through the window. The man's back is turned toward the counter – and she can't help but feel glad; she wouldn't have to see his face – and when she focuses, it is easy to pull the trigger like she has dozens of times before.

The bullet punches through his head like a finger to paper and he lurches forward without a sound. A red splash of brain matter and blood and cranial bones coats the counter.

Dead. Another checkmark on the list. Another lousy paycheck.

Her ears ringing, she heaves a sigh.

But before she can lower her arms, she hears a faint cry of horror that echoes, echoes in her head.

"Papa!"

_Oh god, oh god._

A cold hand seizes her heart when she sees a small body appear from behind the kitchen counter, a cup of milk clutched in its hand. The white liquid is spilling all over the floor, forming a bizarre pattern of swirls and circles as it mixed with the fresh red blood. It is beautiful and horrifying and she wants to retch.

The little boy, no older than four, slips on the floor and lands hard on his hands, striped socks tinged pink. He begins to wail.

The cry breaks her frozen state, and the woman outside the window runs like she's never run before.

_They said there was no one._

She gasps for breath, lungs burning, heart thudding.

_No relations._

_No children._

She sees the little face, screaming, pale. Little hands and little feet coated in red blood.

_Who was she now?_

She runs past the trees and the houses and the cafés.

_Not AGRA. She couldn't be AGRA any longer._

The gun burns against her thigh, accusing her: you are no better than the man who killed your father.

She never goes back to America.

* * *

For years she drifts, taking jobs here and there, not knowing what to do or where to go. She itches for the justice she herself never got to realize, and so she goes freelance – investigating cases thoroughly and meticulously until she is satisfied that her target merited his or her punishment. And once the word of her spreads, this nameless, capable, ruthless, vigilante assassin, she flits from country to country to take on jobs asked of her by desperate but determined people. Good people – or, at least, decent people with a good cause.

She earns good money.

That's why people like her existed, and that's why she believes that she would one day be victim to the same fate. She doesn't fear it.

Her training pays off, ironically, in avoiding the detection of the search parties sent out to look for her. After the first week, news of her disappearance trickles off the screens and papers; she is just another missing tourist, just another silly woman who has got herself lost while travelling alone. After the second week, the CIA stops their search. She has completed her mission and would not be somebody on whom to waste energy. Not yet.

There was no one to keep searching, no one to insist on her return.

She refuses to wonder about the life she left behind. If Andy had ever called her, if Charlene had ever looked over at her empty desk, bewildered and concerned.

Because, if she did, she is scared that her loneliness, kept at bay with the adrenaline of the job and the constant weariness that accompanied it, would finally drown her.

So she drifts.

* * *

It is 2008 when she enters England.

And, as always, a graveyard is her first destination.

She passes the headstone adorned with a stone angel; the beautiful limestone with golden lettering; the dark, handsome monument with carved prayers of love and peace. She stops instead before an old grey stone, once beloved – a dried out vase, flowerless and stained, sits just to the left – but now worn by the weather and forgotten.

 _Mary Elizabeth Morstan_  
1969-1974  
Our Little Flower  
Our Precious Pearl

And she's so tired, so tired of this life of killing and feeling satisfied then empty then nothing and killing again.  _Our Little Flower_ , she reads, and she thinks of the alyssums, of Alisa and Alyssa and A. and AGRA and María and Renée and Gretel and the running, always running, and she wants to stop.

She wants to stop.

She kneels down by the grave and scrapes the dirt out of the engraved letters with her fingernails.

Mary.

She has never felt bad for stealing the names of the dead, feeling instead as if she were carrying on a part of their lives they never had the chance to live. But every time she would need a new identity, a new name, it never fit quite right, like she was wearing shoes two sizes too big. Acting in a mask that didn't fully align with the contours of her face.

Yet 'Mary' feels... nice. Simple. Quiet. Something she has craved for many a time over the course of the last few years. Just a little peace and quiet and maybe a chance to settle down for once. Maybe get a job, one a bit mundane. Maybe marry a nice, ordinary man.

Yes. That seemed right. She thinks that she rather deserves it.

She gets up, brushing the dirt off her pants – no,  _trousers_  – and nods at the little gravestone.

And she finally,  _finally_ , thinks that part of her life is over. She is now Mary Elizabeth Morstan – the name rolls in her mouth and warms her lips like she's drinking hot tea. She belongs to it.

* * *

"Oh yeah, I work for him."

Mary stares. "You're  _joking_."

That morning, Mary, a habitually early riser, had opened her laptop to find a familiar face staring at her from the screen, a man she hadn't seen since she was studying in college a lifetime ago. Many lifetimes ago. And now, he had a name: Charles Augustus Magnussen.

 _"Who the_ hell  _are you?"_

_"I'm merely a business man."_

"Fuck," she'd said out loud, and spent the rest of her Saturday morning researching – thoroughly – about the man before going out for what was supposed to be a casual lunch date with the first friend she'd ever made in England.

"You are  _fucking_ joking."

"Nope." Janine pops her 'p', grabbing another chip from the bag. "It's a small world."

Mary shakes her head, wondering if the fates were laughing at her. A powerful man like Magnussen would have to have some kind of leverage over his employees, and she wonders what kind of abuse her friend suffered under his slimy, manicured hands. "How do you, you know, resist ripping those spectacles off his snake face and potentially, maybe, sort of, shooting him in the head?" She tries to keep her tone light and miserably fails.

Janine's eyes flicker to Mary, surprised, but a moment later she throws her head back and laughs. "You've got a lot of secrets hidden away in that little body, don't you?"

Mary nibbles on a fry –  _chip_  – and shrugs. "So do you, apparently."

"Well, the pay is great and the office has a stunning view," Janine says, tone matter-of-fact.

"I think I'd rather die," Mary states bluntly.

"And," Janine continues, "you get used to it. You learn things."

"What could you  _possibly_ learn?"

Her friend hums, then takes another chip from the brown paper bag. "You know the best thing about being the secretary to a shark, Mary?" Janine asks, grinning with an ease she would never have imagined from someone playing a role like hers. "You learn how to swim in  _very_ shallow waters."

* * *

Mary's job at the clinic is simple and easy and boring and dull. No, no – it's lovely, she tells herself.

Forging the papers was easy enough, for she couldn't say that she received her extensive medical training during her run with the CIA and outside of it on her own due to a fascination with human biology. She couldn't say that she knows how to sew and wrap with precision because she knows just as well how to break and puncture.

She tries not to think about how she gives lollies to giggling little boys with the same hands she orphaned one.

Not that she's in need of a job, necessarily; she has enough saved up from her years of freelance that she can afford to buy small luxuries now and then even after paying the exorbitant London rent.

And although she prefers to take cabs back and forth from her one-bedroom flat, she decides to buy a car of her own after tuning in on the BBC one day to hear news of a cab driver who managed to stage three murders as if they were suicides – before finally biting the dust, courtesy of a mysterious shooter. She wonders if this shooter was also "government employed".

Mary finds the whole scheme rather impressive and the tips of her fingers tingle with just the thought of being a part of it (just her luck to have kept taking the non-murderous cabs); but, she thinks, it's better to be safe than sorry. She'd rather not have to kill anybody else just yet.

* * *

She's kept little from her past: a small, doll-like figurine she feels is important, though she can't quite remember its significance; a loathed memory stick where she's recorded a precise, detailed record of who she once was; her favourite outfit – practical and dark – that she'd bought for herself right before her first mission; a gun holster that strapped to her thigh; and, of course, her trusty gun. Her horrible gun. Sometimes she takes it out of the cardboard box in the back of her closet and stares at it, remembering.

Mary thinks she could very well go to Appledore and interrogate the man herself. And one day, after meeting with a very tetchy Janine and seeing tiny blue crescents marking the skin around her eye – "I'd be a right gimp if I stepped out of line, Mary, you know that" – she finds herself angrily shoving the gun in her holster and ripping her jacket off the hook.

But when her hand grips the door handle, she forces herself to stop. She couldn't. She just couldn't.

God, what she wouldn't give for Magnussen and his poisoned secrets to just disappear off the surface of the earth. She was ready – and had been ready for a long time – to give up the mystery that has haunted her all her life if she believed that there was no way, no chance in the world, of finding the answer.

Magnussen anchored her to her past, and with the past remained blood and death and apathy and everything she wishes desperately were not a part of her.

* * *

Mary meets David Johnson when he bumps her from behind in line at the local bakery.

She whips around – weight evenly balanced on her legs and an umbrella about to stab – when she comes face to face with a stammering blond man. Mary blushes and lowers her polka-dotted umbrella, noticing the lovely light blue of his eyes.

"Sorry," she says, genuinely apologetic. The other man looks frightened out of his wits. "I used to teach taekwondo, guess I still have the instincts."

Damn. She was trying hard to not lie these days, a compulsive habit ingrained in her from years of running and hiding. Hopefully he wouldn't bring it up again in the future.

In the future?

The man clears his throat then shakes his head, regaining his composure. With a smile playing on his lips, he replies, "No worries, miss. I just wasn't expecting to get nearly harpooned by a brolly while buying a cranberry loaf."

"My mo – mum used to make  _wicked_ cranberry loaves," she chirps, then winces at her rusty efforts at flirting.

"Oh?" he replies, not noticing her embarrassment. He rubs at his short hair and chuckles, and she likes how he isn't so tall that she needs to tilt her neck to look him in the eyes. "And would you care to share the recipe sometime over a coffee?"

Why the hell not, she thinks. She was Mary Morstan, the ordinary, nice woman who wanted to date ordinary, nice men.

"Definitely."

* * *

"And then I said, 'We can still be friends!' Like some berk on the telly," Mary groans into the phone. The news is broadcasting some important piece about a murder-suicide at Bart's – BREAKING NEWS, it reads, in bright red letters – and she shuts it off to hear Janine's sympathetic voice crackling over the speakers.

"Oh  _no_ , Mary. Not the 'let's stay friends' speech."

"Yes, I know," she moans, squashing her head back into the pillow. "It just came out."

"And what did David say?"

"He kind of nodded and cringed and left, but he texted me after, saying: 'I still have feelings for you, but we can be friends.'"

"Crikey, he really likes you, doesn't he?" Janine is whispering, obviously at work. "If a man loved me that much, I wouldn't leave him unless he was a real tosser."

Mary doesn't answer, her thoughts on whether it would be worth the trouble to delete all those photos off Facebook or not.

"Why'd you break it off anyway?"

"Because –" She cuts herself off. Because he was so  _ordinary_. Because he could talk of only stocks and sports and sales at the local shops. Because he was bland, like a cup of warm tea that had grown cold and stale over time. His eyes were blue and lovely – but they offered nothing, no depth, no darkness.

She had liked this initially. He was an escape from her own dark thoughts, and he made her giggle like a fool in a way she hadn't since her early twenties. He was an ideal man, if only a tad clingy – though in comparison to her own flaws, he was practically a saint.

But that was just it. He was too innocent, and she couldn't handle it.

"Because," she finally continues, "he doesn't deserve someone like me."

* * *

Her secretary leaves in the winter of 2012. The same day, an unassuming man comes to the clinic with a CV in hand.

"Hello, I'm John Watson. I'm here to apply for a position," he says quietly but firmly and Mary peers at him from behind the counter. There is something about him that is familiar, like a face on the bus or in an advert on the telly. Before she can open her mouth to ask if he's ever been around to the clinic, perhaps as a patient, he adds, "As a doctor, that is."

She looks at him, in his ironed jeans and worn shirt and tie, and wonders if she should turn him away now and save time. Yet when she meets his tired – but strangely determined – eyes, she can't form the words. And not out of pity.

"Well," she says instead, "we're looking primarily for secretaries at the moment, but we could always use qualified doctors." She's lying, really; they have plenty of doctors and nurses to fill their tiny clinic. But this man – this John Watson – seems too guarded, too careful, as if he were deliberately  _trying_  to look unassuming. As if he were putting on a front.

And Mary is intrigued, for in doing so, he reminds her of herself.

Her eyes trail down the sheet of paper. Soldier and doctor – a career army medic with a vast medical knowledge, too overqualified for locum work, really. He was impressive as hell, and she knows that he knows it. John Watson sits calmly in front of her, dull eyes focused on the ticking clock.

"This job might be a bit mundane for you," Mary says honestly, breaking the silence in her office.

His eyes flicker to hers, and he smiles without humour. "I'm a bit used to mundane nowadays."

She wonders exactly what he means by that. "Well, I can see from here that you've worked in a similar environment back in 2010, Dr Watson, so you probably know the ropes by now."

He gives a single nod, that tight-lipped smile frozen on his face. Mary thinks that if he really smiled, John Watson would be quite a handsome man.

"But you've no work experience listed afterwards."

"I –" Clearing his throat, he looks away again. "I sort of worked... free-lance for NSY."

Mary sits back, impressed. "New Scotland Yard?"

"My colleague and I were consultants." And here, John Watson gives a half-grin that lights up his eyes – such a deep blue they could be brown when cast in shadow – and a dimple appears on the right side of his cheek. He seems almost ordinary, but there is something there, something dark, that lurks behind his steady demeanour. In his posture, in his carefully controlled expressions, in the hands that sit white knuckled on his knees, as if to keep them from shaking.

To her mortification, he notices her staring and gives a small chuckle, lips spreading wide in a full-blown grin, hands relaxing.

And she blushes.

* * *

"Like a fucking schoolgirl."

"Blue eyes and blond hair, you say? Clearly you have a type, you naughty girl. Give us a shout when you want some quality time with CAM."

"Oh, shut it."

* * *

That night, Mary lays awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.

The moment she arrived back home after work, she ran to the computer, prepared to do some research on this John Watson, the soldier and doctor and consultant. The first result that came up was a blog, the rest news articles about a detective named Sherlock Holmes. She clicked on the blog.

Now, her head buzzes with thoughts and questions – and excitement.

Here was someone finally interesting.

When she gets to work the following Monday, she sits herself at the front desk. And when John Watson arrives promptly at 8 a.m., she directs him to her old office after introducing him to his fellow doctors and nurses. "Here's your office, Dr Watson," she says, to which he responds, "Call me John."

Mary feels his gaze on her back as she leaves the office, and she hopes that he doesn't see her flush.

They settle into a comfortable routine. She takes a break from her role of nurse, unless she needs to fill in for an absent co-worker, and works primarily at the front desk, taking calls and greeting guests. It's a nice break, and she finds it relaxing, methodical. During slow runs, John sometimes comes out to chat; and during rush hours, Mary sometimes pops by his office with a coffee ("No sugar or cream, yeah?").

She notices that John often forgets to eat breakfast, arriving at the office too early and looking surprised and disoriented and tired, and so she makes an extra bagel sandwich every other day to toss on his desk. "I have way too many bagels," she tells him, then berates herself in her head.  _Who just says "I have way too many bagels"?_

He seems annoyed the first couple of times, but begins to grudgingly accept them. She then starts to hand him ripe red apples at lunch. "Apple season," she says by way of explanation.

One Wednesday, John sets a cup of coffee down on the front counter, and she looks up from her computer screen with a questioning glance. "It's from the Criterion, near Bart's," he says hastily. "Two sugars, one cream, right?"

Mary accepts it gratefully, breathing in the rich aroma. "How'd you deduce that?" she teases, then regrets it immediately as he blinks slowly, face closing off. John gives her a half-hearted shrug then retires into his office.

She wonders if Sherlock Holmes, dead as he was, could ever have predicted the level of damage he would inflict on his best friend when he stepped off that building a year-and-a-half ago.

* * *

 _21.01.13_  
from: blocked  
Happy Birthday.  
Keeping an eye on you, poppet.  
\- CAM

* * *

"You know what he told me, Mary?" Janine says, stirring sugar into her tea. "He said, 'I own you.' And I said, 'Well, you're my boss, Mr Magnussen', because I'm used to taking shite from him. And he goes, 'No, no, I own you because I own  _Mary Morstan_. And I own Mary Morstan because I own her father. Tell her that, would you?' So, here I am, telling you."

Mary sighs, closing her eyes. "You should just stay away from me, Janine. He knows you're my friend, so he has even more leverage over you. We have to find some way to convince him I don't care about you. Damn it!" she seethes, stabbing at her muffin. "Why can't he just leave me alone?"

The secret that once seemed so important now mattered very little in this life, Mary's life. The secret that had haunted her seemed nothing more than the desperate fancy of a traumatized child unable to completely move past the violent death of her father.

Now she just wants to leave it all behind, to wipe it away like it never happened. And Magnussen wasn't letting her.

Janine snatches away her victimized muffin. "Christ, Mary."

When Mary continues glaring at the table, Janine flicks a piece of muffin at her face. The moment she looks up, miffed, Janine says quickly, "Look, I don't know what he has on you, and frankly, I don't want to know. I'm just the secretary, and I'm your friend, all right? Now, CAM: he likes power. He enjoys playing with people. The more you let him affect you, the more you're letting him win. The more he'll find to make your life hell. The more he'll start to control the people  _around_ you  _through_ you. Don't you understand?"

She does understand, and she hates it. She lets the hate thud in her heart and spread through her veins and she knows she's losing at Magnussen's game. She'd been losing ever since she picked up his spectacles off the ground.

But, by god, she would not let herself live this life, Mary's life, in his clutches, no matter the cost it took to ensure it.

* * *

John Watson asks her out on Valentine's Day, and Mary finds it so cheesy and romantic that she stammers and blushes and says "yes" much too quickly.

They share stories and laugh through the night. She jokes about the handsome, mustached French waiter, and he winks at her over his glass of wine, comfortable and giddy. After dinner, he drives her to his place and they collapse onto his bed, still giggling about something neither of them can remember.

He doesn't bring up the small tattoo in a foreign alphabet – Cyrillic, perhaps – that he spots on the small of her back.

She doesn't mention the thin, silvery scars on both his temples, nor the much larger ones covering his left shoulder front to back.

Their secrets remain hidden, locked, guarded. Until little by little, without even knowing, the layers, built up carefully and meticulously over the years, start to unravel.

John quietly says that he's returning to his therapist, and Mary gives him a kiss. "Good idea. I had one after my father died, and it helped. It really did." John looks at her with grateful eyes, having expected pity or shock or aversion. But she offers him nothing but encouragement, even accompanying to the building for the appointment with a promise to meet him afterwards for lunch.

Mary shuts the TV off, pale and wan, after she sees a man's head burst from a speeding bullet and his comrades cry out in horror – because she hears instead the screams of a child. John glances at her, gets up from the couch, and returns minutes later with a cup of chamomile. "Never liked war movies either," he murmurs, mind filled with nightmares of his own.

The one subject John would never mention was his best friend, either skirting around it or shutting Mary out all together if she dared to breach it.

So when, on a rainy day in April, John first takes her to the grave of Sherlock Holmes and his grief is as tangible as the raindrops pitter-pattering on her cheek, Mary feels as though he has given her more than he could ever express in words, more than she deserves. More than she could reciprocate. Instead, she takes his hand as he stares blankly ahead and hopes with all her heart that he will never find out who and what she used to be.

She can't bear the thought of breaking him further.

Because if he broke, she thinks she might shatter.

Some secrets were meant to stay secret.

* * *

One night, a few weeks after she moves in, John asks about the little nesting doll she has placed on the dresser of their bedroom. "Where are the others?" he says curiously, picking up the figure. The paint has faded somewhat, and the bottom edge chipped, but it's in otherwise good condition. "Don't these usually come in, you know, fives or sixes?"

She simply shrugs, unloading more dishes from a box marked 'FRAGILE'. "I only kept the one."

"Didn't like the rest of them?" John asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Only the last has lived all their lives, hasn't it." It isn't a question.

He holds it up closer to his eyes, and finally smiles. "Looks like you, you know that?" Before giving her a chance to respond, he sets the doll gently back on the dresser and wraps an arm around her waist.

"Dinner?" he says, his lips quirking as if it were some inside joke to which she was not privy. It happens often, but she's fine with that; she's got several secrets of her own, after all.

Mary leans into his hold – they really were the perfect height for each other – and puts a hand over his.

"Starving," she replies.

The broken toy soldier and the flawed little nesting doll. Who would have known.

 _The End_.


End file.
